St Joseph of Cupertino, Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggle
by Spacemin Spiff
Summary: Every winter Anthony's parents would send him an owl inviting him to join them for their Christmas Holiday in Goa. He would respond "No thank you, much prefer it here," and he would use the stationary he bought with his House crest, the red and gold ink lion that silently roared atop the header, just to be that much more of a jerk about it. (Harry Potter AU)


Anthony was not fond of snow.

This fact, as small as it sounded, was perhaps the ultimate measure of how poorly he got along with his relatives. Every winter since he had received his acceptance letter his parents would send him an owl (always the eagle owl, because they wanted to be showy about the one letter they sent him all year) inviting him to spend his Christmas Holiday with them back in Goa. He would respond "No thank you, much prefer it here," and he would be sure to use the stationary he bought with his House crest, the red and gold ink lion that silently roared atop the header, just to be that much more of a dick about it. Every few months he would consider working towards becoming a prefect, just so he could sign his letters with the title, but then he got bored or distracted or had a big meal and decided to cut classes that day and take a nap instead.

Still, it was awful with coldness at Hogwarts, and for this reason he always hesitated to tie his letter of rejection onto the leg of his owl. Up in the owlery, the drafty wind at the back of his neck and him in two scarves when the first flake hadn't even gotten the chance to fall yet, he would have a moment of weakness in which he would think of Agonda Beach and prawn curry. Then he would consider spending two weeks with his immediate family, Merlin forbid the extended ones if they decided to meet up, and he doubled the knot just to be safe.

In his first year it had been particularly difficult to send that letter. It was all too recently that his teeth had chattered together as he and the other students glode over the dark waters of the lake, the groundskeeper at the helm muttering in an unplaceable accent about sticking pins into people. All too recently that he had stood in the crowded hall, waiting for "Crowley, Anthony" to be called. All too recently that he had felt the brim of the Sorting Hat pressing down on the joints of his ears and hoped, that he had heard the hat mutter "Oh my, we really are quite sure about this then, are we?" before calling out "Gryffindor!"

He hadn't gotten a howler about it, but one of his cousins had pulled him aside after the feast and asked him if he thought this was funny. Slytherin's Head Girl and a terribly morose type, she had said something ominous about worrying for his future, and he had matched her tone to say he was very disappointed about being the only Crowley who might not graduate with dishonors from Azkaban.

If he was being honest with himself, he wasn't sure how they hadn't seen it coming earlier. He had always been the white sheep of the family, trying to start conga lines at debutante balls and begging his parents to adopt mangy strays. He was equally unsure what to do with all of the green clothes he had piled up in his trunk. He decided to send some of the shirts and robes back, but keep the scarves. His parents had not sent him replacements.

He was a bit surprised to be invited to spend Christmas Holiday with them. The letter he received said something about "recent shortcomings" and "restoring the family bond." The word "tradition" covered the page like stars in the night sky. Despite this he had given it honest consideration, especially when he reached the part about continuing to hone his "individual skills." "Individual skills" was something his parents liked to say when they meant "animagus training."

The Crowleys were an old family with old traditions, and one of their most storied was a rite of passage marked by becoming an animagus. It was a process that began at nine and continued for four years, one that his family had taken part in for as long as their tapestry ran. It was technically legal to become an animagus at the age of thirteen in much the same way it was technically legal to marry a lamppost. No one had ever considered it a possibility, so no one ever put a law down in the books against it. Anthony had already begun this long process, one that involved several rituals which he highly suspected were not technically required to gain the skill and probably came from a desire to wear a lot of fancy robes and show off the good chinaware to relatives. While Anthony did not enjoy all of this fuss, especially when his extended family got in on it and his Great Aunt Anne kept telling him she was certain that he was going to be a pigeon, he had to admit that the end result would be useful. His older siblings had told them they could speak with animals afterwards, and Anthony had several things he wanted to talk to his mother's cat about. Primarily how little he liked it when she brought dead birds to him first thing in the morning, but also about how it was possible that she kept getting into locked rooms.

Of course there was a danger to it. Blacked out of his family's acknowledged history were all the children that had come out of the process with the mind of a goat or the legs of a stork. They were considered inferiors anyway, not intelligent and talented enough to become an animagus. If they weren't an animagus, they weren't a Crowley. It was left unsaid that, if they weren't a Crowley, they weren't pureblooded. Anthony, personally, was not a fan of calling his family pureblooded. The term had become more or less defunct by then—from what he had managed to stay awake for in his History of Magic class it stopped holding much weight after the Battle of Hogwarts—and in any case he preferred inbred. His family tree was warped and weft, it turned back into itself around the seventeenth century, where it continued to dwindle. The whole reason his grandparents had come to England was to find someone for their children to marry besides their cousins.

Anthony drafted two letters. There was a truly impressive amount of cussing in the first draft; it went on for three rolls of parchment. He had decided however, after reading it over, that he really did like having a roof over his head and clothes on his back, not to mention a little pocket money once in a while, more than he liked brutal honesty. He made a second draft, something succinct and superficially neutral, and made sure to include a postscript cheerfully informing them that he had decided on a name for his screech owl: Godric.

In his second year he received what could, at a stretch, be considered a present along with his invitation. It was a disgruntled corn snake, and from the way he was hissing he had thoroughly loathed being carried over miles of countryside in an owl's talons. It took Anthony a second or two to recognize him.

"Salazar?" he asked incredulously, to the ever increasing stares of his fellow Gryffindors. "What are you doing here?" Reading the letter that accompanied the serpent answered this question. Salazar, who had been his elder brother's pet, had eaten their sister's new rat in the middle of the night and regurgitated it into their mother's slippers later that afternoon. His family had decided to send him off to Hogwarts with Anthony, who got from the letter a sense of their need to have all of their greatest disappointments in one place so that they could at least keep tabs on them. He didn't mind, and in fact suspected that the snake had been playing some sort of gambit to get out of the house and see a bit more of the world. The name bothered him a bit, but it was made up for, to his eternal amusement, by the fact that he and Godric got along so swimmingly.

Salazar was a mad old bugger, and Anthony could respect that. He had a variety of particularities: he kept eating Anthony's sickles out of his robe pockets at night, hissed along to the choruses of Weird Sister songs, and refused to touch white mice. Perhaps most bizarrely, for a snake at least, he was quite fond of the winter. Anthony may not have been a parselmouth, but he got the hint when—starting around October—Salazar would stare longingly out of the window and then proceed to hit his head against the glass of his tank. He refused to stop until Anthony picked him up and let him snuggle between the folds of his scarf so that he could enjoy the drafty halls and snowy courtyards that Anthony traversed daily in an effort to keep up with his class schedule.

Salazar liked ice in particular, and when class was off but he still demanded to go out Anthony would put a warming charm on him before taking him to the edge of the frozen lake and letting him down between the reeds. Salazar would writhe back and forth, bearing his stomach and hissing happily. Anthony would watch him carefully, rubbing his hands together and telling the snake that he must be suicidal. After a few minutes of this Anthony would pick him back up and put him into his coat. A few times Salazar, angry at being denied his fun, would bite him, but Anthony persisted. He wanted to be absolutely sure the daft thing wouldn't freeze to death.

Occasionally Anthony would take him up to the owlery and watch as he and Godric explored the rafters, nipping at other owls' legs when they made a fuss about all the commotion the two were making. Anthony would give owl treats to Godric and Salazar would become jealous and sulk until he too got an owl treat, which he spat out immediately after receiving. Once in a blue moon, when Anthony was feeling spirited and his earmuffs had a particularly good fit, he would take his broom out to the empty Quiddich fields. Godric would fly alongside him, Salazar would peek out of the folds of his scarf and sway his head back and forth like a metronome. Anthony flew around the castle as well, but he was not very talented at compensating for gusts of wind and he tended to crash into the roofs or scrape against the towers, so he saved those exercises for when he was alone.

Crowley liked spending time with his pets, even more so considering he did not have many human friends. He realized, of course, how pathetic this sounded. In the very least, he thought as he sat down next to Salazar's new terrarium to reject his family's invitation, that's one less thing for me to worry about at break. He supposed other students might be tempted to visit relatives by a need for company, but Anthony didn't have many friends at school. The mass exodus from the castle didn't have much of an effect on his social life. The Slytherins hated him for being a member of their rival House, and because many of them had already met him at their parents' parties. Everyone else seemed to be vaguely afraid or at best suspicious of him, and Anthony blamed them only halfheartedly for this. He had a death eater chic look about him—it was the cheekbones and the fact that he wore too much black, not to mention his family's reputation. There had been a rumor going around during his first year that he was a spy who had charmed the Sorting Hat into putting him in the wrong House, and although that had died down soon enough he still kept his distance from others.

He would have liked friends, of course, but he wasn't the outgoing type. In any case, he was planning on trying out for Quidditch next year, and he was rather hoping that would take care of the problem for him.

In his third year Anthony met two people that would alter the course of his life: Aziraphale Selwyn and James Bond. This was fortunate because it was also in his third year that he tried out for Gryffindor keeper but kept smashing his broom into the goalposts and falling to the ground, quite ruining his plan to gain popularity through athleticism.

His parents—whose faith in his inherent badness had been somewhat bolstered by the fact that, over the summer, he had not only become a fully-fledged animagus but had taken the form of a snake—sent him his invitation in a cheerier tone than usual. Anthony, who hadn't felt much changed by spending time as a snake except by becoming utterly convinced that Salazar did in fact have a death wish based around cold temperatures, wrote them an equally cheery rejection. He had to admit he was rather pleased to have sorted the whole dead bird thing out with his mother's cat, although she did not tell him how she managed to go anywhere she wanted in the house, despite charms and deadbolts to the contrary. It was also nice to pass his free time with Salazar in his terrarium. The snake would spend hours watching snowflakes drift past the window, babbling about "brisk wind" this and "frozen lake" that while Anthony curled up contentedly on the warmest side of the tank, hissing politely once in a while. It was much preferable to his old attempts to stay warm: burying his body in scratchy wool and guarding the chair closest to the common room fire like a cat on a windowsill.

He couldn't spare too many hours basking in the terrarium, however, as he had plans to do things over the Christmas Holiday. Grand things. His parents, he knew, had not been pleased when he told them he was taking Intro to Muggle Studies at the start of the summer. His family had bemoaned this choice, asked what they had done wrong: they had always kept him away from muggle things, they had always told him of the superiority of magic. The full bewail-wretchedly-and-put-ash-upon-your-brow-for-your-honor-has-been-violated routine. If Anthony hadn't been certain that this tragic monologue was rhetorical he would have pointed out that they had more or less chosen this fate for him. When you tell a kid that muggle culture is boring and inferior and then he finds out that they can use lightning to make their toast and use central heating in winter, what do you expect? It even came to pass that Muggle Studies was the only class that he received perfect marks in, which wasn't exactly intentional but was assuredly fun to flaunt in front of his parents.

Perhaps they could have talked him out of his fascination in the first few weeks of class, when Anthony was taking it mostly for an easy grade and Prof. Pulsifer had spent three classes trying to make a light bulb work. When he finally called Prof. Device, the junior Divination teacher (but more importantly, for their needs at least, a muggleborn) to help him, the awe was more or less gone out of the whole process. If electricity only worked once every hundred tries, Anthony reasoned, it can't be that useful.

If they had gotten him then, if they had sent him a howler about switching to something more "noble," it might have worked. But the week after the light bulb debacle Prof. Pulsifer started teaching them about muggle aurors, and they were given an assignment to write an essay about how non-magical technology was used to successfully fight crime. To illustrate the concept, and because he was not entirely familiar with the idea of escapism, their teacher showed them a muggle picture called "Casino Royale."

After that there was no force magical or natural—be it weather, shame, or even laziness—that could make Anthony miss a Muggle Studies class.

As soon as that paradigm-shifting class let out Anthony resolved to skip Charms and go to the Library. He went straight to the Muggle Studies reference section and found every James Bond movie they had. For a good hour or two he struggled with the machine he was supposed to put the shiny circles in to watch the series of moving photographs muggles called "films". He considered asking Prof. Pulsifer about it, but remembered the light bulb and decided to forge ahead alone. After an extended effort he figured out that the shiny side of the circle went down in the slot and that if you kept pressing buttons something would eventually start moving.

It took him a good day or two of watching the films and pestering Prof. Pulsifer to figure out that Agent 007 wasn't supposed to be a metamorphmagus—and it would not be until ten years in the future, when he struck up a conversation with a woman at a muggle bar and was slapped across the face, that he learned that Pussy Galore was not actually a common muggle name. What he did understand at the time, however, had fascinated him.

Muggle clothing, muggle fighting, things called sunglasses, metal wands that made people bleed, things with a thousand buttons that all did one thing, things with one button that did a thousand things, and cars. True, it was a letdown when he found out that they did not typically go underwater, but it wasn't as if that had been Anthony's favorite thing about cars anyway. Anthony wasn't even sure what his favorite thing about cars was. How sleek they looked? How they sounded? The fact that, from what he had learned in class, they appeared to be powered by explosions?

It was this drive that led him to dedicate his Christmas Holiday to learning everything there was to know about cars. Which is how, in a way, James Bond introduced him to Aziraphale.

Prof. Pulsifer had recommended he start his research with Wilhelm Wigworthy's Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggles, which had a chapter on the subject of transportation, so he came to the library on the first day he was free from class. The library was always quiet, but during holiday it was eerily so, with the lash of cold wind beating against stone walls and hissing between towers. It was the kind of silence that rang, which is why Anthony preferred to be in and out of there as seamlessly as possible. He would not be able to do this, however, because Madam Pince informed him that the book he was looking for had been taken out already.

"He has it." She pointed to a boy curled up on a couch by a crackling fireplace, and the affection with which she said "he" made Crowley very wary. Nonetheless, he had to get that book.

The boy on the couch had a face that he vaguely recognized, something about the sides and back of it tickled at his memory, and as he approached the overstuffed, creaking couch he realized that it was that Hufflepuff from his Muggle Studies class. The one who sat in the front row and asked incessant questions about muggle religions.

"Hello," he called to the boy, who didn't respond, his eyes glued to the pages Anthony so dearly begrudged him of. He cleared his throat. "Hey,badger," he snapped, successfully provoking the boy's eyes to glide past the borders of his book and rest on him.

"What?"

"I need that book."

"I'm reading it. Or at least I was reading it, before you interrupted me." Anthony bristled. If he were to be honest with himself, he had expected the Hufflepuff to be afraid of him, and was thrown by this defiant response.

"It's not like you don't have other options," he snapped, gesturing at the group of twenty or so dusty tomes stacked on the table in front of the fireplace. There was a not unimpressive amount of biscuits and tea arranged on the other end. Between his stockpile of food and literature, the patient gaze in his eyes, and the way his tartan sweater matched the upholstery, Anthony would not be shocked if the boy was trying to merge with the couch. Or else, perhaps, that he had grown out of it.

"If you wanted this book so badly, perhaps you should have come by earlier."

"This is early." The Hufflepuff rolled his eyes just a bit, muttering something Anthony half caught about "Gryffindor-time."

"If you want to know about muggles so badly, you can read over my shoulder." Anthony narrowed his eyes, surprised and suspicious.

"Alright then," he said after a pause, settling into a nearby chair and scraping it against the stone floor until it was at a good angle relative to the couch.

"See now? It isn't that hard to find a compromise."

Anthony put substantial effort into the first hour of reading. He leaned in close so that his hair got on the side of the other boy's face, he breathed humidly next to his ear, he coughed several times. He moved back and forth so that his chair creaked and even went so far as to smell the Hufflepuff's hair in the creepiest manner possible. Nothing broke the boy's concentration, not for a second, and eventually Anthony gave up and actually started to read the book. It was a chapter about muggle holidays, and he was fascinated to find their Christmases eerily similar, though with less interesting decorations. The other boy read rather slowly, but he still asked if it was alright to turn the page yet whenever he was done. Anthony was finding it difficult to summon malice against him, and stopped even attempting at loathing when the chapter was finished and the Hufflepuff asked him courteously which subject he was interested in reading about next.

"I was thinking of automobiles mostly."

"Yes, those are quite interesting," he said politely. The boy licked his thumb, turned to the chapter on transportation, and settled back into reading. Anthony lost himself in the fascinating system of internal combustion, the evolution of cars from bulky to sleek, the mysterious substances muggles fed their machines of burden. Once they had come to the end of the chapter, the Hufflepuff suggested a break for tea.

"So," Anthony began, fiddling with the cup and saucer he had transfigured out of some spare quills he had in his pocket, "I didn't quite catch your name."

"Aziraphale." Anthony felt a brief and unintentional pang of empathy. Only a pureblood twit would curse their child with a name as ridiculous as "Aziraphale". He counted himself lucky he got off with "Anthony," especially as he had reason to believe "Aleister" had been bandied about for a time.

"Aziraphale Selwyn." The cringe of empathy redoubled. The Selwyns were straight off of Nott's Directory, not even his family was that "prestigious." Worse yet, he was pretty sure several of them were married to Umbridges. He regrouped his thoughts quickly, though. The last thing he needed right now was to be around another old-fashioned bigot. Although, he considered, since when are there pureblood supremacists in Hufflepuff? He realized he was staring into the fireplace a bit too intensely.

"Anthony Crowley." He held out his hand, and Aziraphale shook it.

"Nice to meet you." Several pots of tea later their book remained untouched and they were discussing the perils and triumphs of family-disappointing sorting.

"I mean, I thought I had it bad as a Gryffindor, but a 'Puff?" Anthony shook his head in disbelief. "Your parents must have died."

"It was nothing like that," Aziraphale, who had politely refused Anthony's prior offer to call him "Az" on the basis that nicknames did not suit him, laughed, "it was more of a "we're not mad we're disappointed" bit. Honestly I think they might have suspected it. I did." Anthony considered this, biting the head off of a chocolate frog he had found half melted in the pocket of his robe.

"I would have pegged you a Ravenclaw, with all those books." Aziraphale gained a look about him of someone who had found themselves with their broom caught in a familiar and counterproductive wind.

"I am studious, of course. The thing is, there are traits that are far more important than knowledge. Wit beyond measure is hardly man's greatest treasure. Friendship, loyalty, justice-"

"Food." Anthony cut in.

"-and patience, are more important," the Hufflepuff finished pointedly. "And what about you? I thought a smart mouth was the most important qualification of a Slytherin?" Anthony shrugged, popping the rest of his frog into his mouth and sticking it into his cheek so that his voice came out thick and muffled.

"Well, I've always considered the whole "tradition" thing to be bunk. And cunning is just a way of saying you don't want to go out and get your hands dirty with your actual intentions. It's cowardly, if you ask me."

"I suppose I can see that. I know how you feel about self-preservation, after all, I've seen you on a broom."

"When have you seen me on a broom?" The Hufflepuff's face flushed, he stirred his tea self-consciously.

"Oh, you know, you fly around the castle sometimes." Anthony grinned.

"You watch me?"

"Don't flatter yourself," Aziraphale said in a tone that more or less invited Anthony to flatter himself. "I just wanted to know where all those banging noises were coming from."

They eventually came back to Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggles, going by the index in an effort to discover the secrets of "films" and figure out how it could be that muggle pictures were so perfectly still. They met up in the library later in the Holiday, Aziraphale having found a book on the history of muggle transport systems that he wished to share. The Hufflepuff brought along his pet tortoise which, in a choice Anthony would never grow to understand, he had named "St. Joseph of Cupertino."

"He's the Patron Saint of students, test takers, and air travelers for Catholic muggles," the Hufflepuff had explained proudly. "You pray to him if you have a big exam coming up."

"Uh-huh," Anthony responded, distracted from the history of a company named Bentley by this bizarre significance.

"My tawny is named St. Brigid of Kildare. She's the Patron Saint of travelers, printing presses, fugitives, and scholars. You pray to her if you are going on a trip or trying to print a book of prophecies." He laughed. "I have to admit, of the two I prefer St. Joseph. The saint, that is, not the tortoise. He was an absolute failure: couldn't learn how to make shoes, rejected from every monastery he tried to join, useless at his studies. His mother drove him out of her house and into the streets. Then he got a job taking care of some friar's mules and ended up lucking his way into ordainment. After that he started levitating constantly." Anthony felt that there was something being left out of this story, but could not imagine what exactly. "In any case, I find myself praying to him much more often, especially with the amount of work I've gotten lately.

"You don't really believe in this religion thing, do you?" Anthony asked. "It's just a bunch of witches and wizards messing with muggles' heads." Aziraphale looked wounded.

"Well, who is to say it isn't true? Muggles think magic is a myth, and we know how wrong they are." Anthony had to admit that he had a point there.

They sat next to each other at the Christmas Feast. Anthony gave Aziraphale the tartan bowler hat that had come out of his Christmas cracker. After the break one of Anthony's cousins, a Slytherin prefect, cornered him in an effort to regale him about Goa, all the sun and sand he had missed in this "dreary old castle." Anthony suspected that he had been put up to it by his parents.

"That's very nice sounding," he admitted, "but I had plenty of fun back here. I made a new friend." His cousin's face turned bleak.

"Not another Gryffindor." Anthony shook his head.

"No," his cousin brightened noticeably, and Anthony took great pleasure in revealing that it was a Hufflepuff.

"How are you getting worse?" The prefect groaned, head in hand.

"I try. In any case, Aziraphale-" At this the other boy perked up.

"Aziraphale? You mean Aziraphale Selwyn?"

"Well, yes-"

"Oh, your parents will be so pleased!" the prefect grinned. Anthony, thrown by this comment, asked what he meant. "A Crowley and a Selwyn is a good match. Not too much intermarrying in the past, good clean blood, er- that is- noble history." Anthony didn't like where this was going.

"It isn't like that. It isn't that both of us-"

"I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't set this up."

"What do you mean?"

"The Selwyns know how hard it is to find a good family, they've been sending out notices to the Shafiqs and the Yaxleys all about their eligibility. Once they realized they had got a boy your age here, they connected the dots. They don't take him home over Christmas Holiday, he just happens to become friendly with you..."

"It isn't like that," Anthony repeated, although now he wasn't feeling quite as certain of that.

"Come on," his cousin scoffed, "I know you're a Gryffindor, but you aren't stupid."

Anthony spent his fourth year avoiding Aziraphale and learning how to drive a car. The first task was substantially more difficult than the second.

Anthony was continuing to disappoint his parents by taking Muggle Music and Muggle Technology. Prof. Pulsifer was teaching Muggle Technology, which Anthony thought—with all the affection he could muster—was an absolutely terrible choice. He was nursing a theory that Prof. Pulsifer had been cursed, at some point in his life, to destroy every piece of muggle technology he tried to use and somehow didn't know about it. Either that, or he was using an underhanded but effective strategy to get Prof. Device to spend time with him. A typical class would begin with a demonstration, continue on with one of several disasters occurring (fire was the most common, but something shooting off into the teacher's eye was a close second), and end with Prof. Pulsifer sending a student to fetch Prof. Device and see if she could help. The fact that he asked for assistance from Prof. Device instead of a muggleborn student seemed to support his scam theory, but at the same time Anthony had trouble imagining the Head of Hufflepuff House being so then again, he would remind himself punishingly Aziraphale

Whether Prof. Pulsifer was cursed, scheming, or just genuinely inept at getting toasters and radios to work, the end result was that Anthony wasn't learning as much about Muggle Technology as he had hoped. He had asked Prof. Pulsifer outside of class if the Muggle Studies Department had a car he could examine. He had been given something called a "hotwheels," which he had assumed was a racecar that had been put under diminuendo. This lead him to spend several weeks under the impression that the inside of a car was a giant sheet of shaped plastic, and to wonder why steering wheels only turned in the movies. He supposed it was like the car going underwater in a James Bond film: something uncommon and fantastic that muggles liked to pretend could happen with any automobile. When he discovered, through further reading, that this was not the case he was rather annoyed at Prof. Pulsifer and deliberately wrote his homework in the sloppiest hand he could manage. He used the same hand in reply to his family's invitation, although he did worry after sending Godric out that his chicken-scratch could have been interpreted as a yes.

It wasn't.

He tried to make a model of a car's interior using a common room chair as the seat, an empty picture frame as a wheel, and pillows as pedals. He ignored the looks the other Gryffindors were giving him when he practiced at night. On occasion a first year muggleborn named Adam would help him practice by shouting out potential obstacles for Anthony to pretend to avoid. He appreciated this, even if he could not imagine himself driving through a rain of fish anytime soon. Of course he wasn't sure when he might be driving at all, considering his family's feelings towards muggle technology.

Muggle Music was where he really had problems. That was the class he shared with Aziraphale, who in his usual fashion sat in the front row and kept trying to redirect conversation away from some band named Queen and on to some muggle religion's chanting. It wasn't difficult to avoid the Hufflepuff on the way to and from this class, he just came late and left early. More generally, in the hall and the grounds, he cultivated the appearance of being incredibly busy and a bit hard of hearing. Once or twice—even knowing that as animagus registered with a falsified age and a substantial amount of bribery he could get in quite a bit of trouble if caught—he had taken on the form of a snake and hid under bookshelves to avoid Aziraphale in the library.

The problem came in times when the Muggle Music professor had them separate into groups and Aziraphale would turn around and give him a look. It wasn't particularly bitter, if anything it was welcoming and expectant, but it made Anthony nervous. Everything about Aziraphale's behavior after their one sided falling out made him nervous. It wasn't that the Hufflepuff pestered him, if he had been the pestering type Anthony could have at least found him annoying and justified ignoring him. The Hufflepuff instead had kept a respectful distance, had been understanding the few times when Anthony had been unable to fake ignorance of his presence and had claimed he had too much work to do to go to the library. He smiled, what more he waved, when they passed in the hall. He seemed unfazed, willing to start over from scratch, and to Anthony this felt uncomfortably fake. So he would pretend not to see Aziraphale, instead weaseling his way into a group of Gryffindors and feeling awful and lonely for the rest of the day.

It was directly after one such incident, when he was lying around the terrarium heating his blood and sulking, that Salazar decided he wanted to see Hogsmeade. He began nudging Anthony, who merely hissed and curled up into a tighter coil. Discovering that this path would be futile, Salazar returned to the tried and true method of slamming his head against the side of the tank. Anthony ignored him for as long as he could, but as Salazar dealt himself a particularly severe blow he uncoiled and flicked his tongue in annoyance.

"Fine, fine," he hissed, slipping out from under the terrarium cover and regaining his former figure. He let out a small sigh of relief. No matter how many times he transformed, he was always left with the nervous suggestion that the next time he did it he would get stuck. He removed the top of the tank and allowed Salazar to climb up his arm, wrapping him up under his scarf. "I have to go to Gladrags anyway."

The walk to Hogsmeade was quiet, except for the crunch of snow under his feet, and Anthony wondered vaguely why that was bothering him now. Then he decided he didn't want to know and tried his very best to concentrate on how he planned to teach himself the differences between automatic and manual. He was thinking of using an umbrella for a shifter.

When he arrived at the village he went straight to Gladrags Wizardwear. He had planned to go there in order to pick out a decent white shirt to salvage his dress robes with. His awkward collection of purchased and gifted clothing, a green shirt and robe with a red vest and socks, made him look like a Christmas tree. He most certainly did not stare longingly at the wall of garishly colorful socks, especially the ones with tartan stripes that crawled over their surface like centipedes. After he was done not staring he paid for his purchases and wandered the streets for a while. Salazar stuck his head out from under his scarf, waving excitedly, and Anthony wondered if the nearby bookshop didn't have something on stickshifts. It was worth a peek.

He made his way over to the entrance of Tomes and Scrolls, only to have its door open just as he was reaching for the handle. Aziraphale, a collection of books in his arms, looked first surprised, then—to Anthony's shock—irritated to see him. Salazar, sensing the mood that had just fallen, stopped waggling back and forth and retreated to wrap around Anthony's neck.

"I was just leaving, but if you want I could put a bag over my head so you don't have to look at me while I walk away," the Hufflepuff offered dryly. Anthony grimaced, looking down at his slush covered boots.

"I-You don't need to do that."

"How absolutely generous of you." Aziraphale turned into the street, walking briskly, and Anthony followed him against his better judgment and Salazar's pleading hiss.

"That's not what I meant. You don't have to- It's not that I hate you-"

"Well of course," Aziraphale's voice was so drenched with sarcasm that he barely sounded like himself. "I assumed you looked like you wanted to vomit every time I smiled at you in the hall because you were overwhelmed by how much you didn't hate me."

"It's just- I didn't want you to hang out with me just because your family was making you." The quietest and least secure part of Anthony added that he didn't want to be used as a pawn in someone else's grab for power. It didn't much matter if it was his parents', Aziraphale's parents', or Aziraphale himself's.

"What are you talking about?" the Hufflepuff sounded irritated, but there was an undertone of curiosity to his voice that Anthony clung to.

"Well, you're my age, your parents want to marry you off to another pureblood, you stayed at Hogwarts during Christmas Holidays, and you happened to check out the exact book I wanted. It just seemed too convenient." Aziraphale stopped short, turned around to face his pursuer. He had a long suffering look in his eyes, but at the same time he was smiling just a bit. It was fond and pitying.

"You're my age, your parents want to marry you off to another pureblood, you stayed at Hogwarts during Christmas Holidays, and you happened to want the exact book I checked out. Not only the book I checked out, the book I was reading at that exact time. Also you only told me muggle religion was stupid once, instead of over and over like everyone else. Also you smelled my hair." Anthony felt very sheepish all of the sudden.

"I was trying to get you to give me the book."

"Have you really been avoiding me for an entire year because you thought the way we met was convenient?"

"I thought there might be a scheme-"

"My dear, do you genuinely think I would have been sorted into my House if I liked to scheme?" Anthony's eyes were firmly fixed on the ground.

"It's just that...not a lot of other students... like me. It seems like everyone who doesn't hate my guts outright is afraid of me, and across the board they assume I'm a snob." Anthony laughed bitterly. "I can see why. I'm not very good at talking to people without insulting them, and I'm used to not trusting them because, well, you know how it is. Family constantly stabbing each other in the back, everyone fighting over what little power they have left after the Ministry stopped favoring our kind. That's what I grew up with, that's what I know. It seemed more plausible that this was a put on than that I had made a friend." He finished off his rant by angrily kicking a pile of snow. Aziraphale sighed kindly.

"How about this, we can start over." He shifted his books into the crook of his arm, holding out his hand. "Aziraphale Selwyn." Anthony, after a moment initial of surprise, smiled. He took the offered hand. Aziraphale then shoved him into a nearby snowbank.

"What the fuck was that?" the Gryffindor sputtered, dirty slush seeping down his back, too bewildered to be angry.

"Now our first meeting was dreadful, and you don't have to worry." Aziraphale explained cheerfully, pulling his companion out of the snow. Anthony, after checking if Salazar was fine (he was delighted) and that his robes were unsullied (they were ruined), laughed.

"And all this time, I was wondering why you were being so nice to me." Aziraphale smiled beatifically.

"It's unseemly to make a fuss in front of others. I was trying to kill you with kindness." Anthony ginned.

"I guess didn't get the hint?"

"No, and it was very frustrating." The Hufflepuff hesitated, looking embarrassed. "In the interest of full disclosure, I might have had a backup plan that involved bribing houselves to put a puking pastille into your dinner." Anthony gaped.

"And you're not in Slytherin?"

"It wasn't like that!" Aziraphale fretted, avoiding eye contact. "It was just that I wanted to know you'd be stuck in the hospital wing so I could actually talk to you."

"You just told me you didn't scheme!"

"I told you I didn't like to scheme. It was tearing me up inside, I assure you." Anthony couldn't help but laugh.

"This is really doing wonders for those trust issues I told you about a minute ago."

"I know, I'm sorry." Aziraphale shifted the stack of books in his arm to a more comfortable potion. "If it helps, consider that I would never have pushed you into a snowbank and then confessed to something like that if I were trying to trick you into liking me." Anthony considered this.

"That's true."

"How about…" Aziraphale ruminated silently for a moment. "How about I promise that in the future I will only stab you in the front."

"You will?"

"Yes."

"You promise?"

"Yes. And will you promise me you'll be less insecure and paranoid around me?" Anthony rather deliberately took his time going over this proposition in his head.

"Alright," he finally said. "Friends?"

"Friends."


End file.
